A Stanford graduate who was allegedly raped in her dorm room at 19 has blasted the school for its handling of her case — revealing her attacker can finish his degree this fall.
The woman, who has remained a Jane Doe, detailed her ordeal in a blistering first-person account published in The Stanford Daily, the student-run campus newspaper, accusing officials and cops of repeated delays and mistakes that left her fighting for accountability for years.
“Over the last four years, I have struggled to make sense of what happened to me, and what continues to happen,” she wrote, questioning why the student was allowed to retain a path to graduation after Stanford found him responsible for “vaginally, digitally and orally raping her.”
Stanford’s Title IX investigation took two years, forcing her to skip classes she shared with the man, fear running into him on campus and miss opportunities — including studying abroad — as proceedings were repeatedly delayed and rescheduled, according to her.
The case culminated in a two-year suspension rather than expulsion, she said.
The Stanford Daily said it reviewed contemporaneous emails, text messages and documents to corroborate previously unreported claims in her account, making an exception to its usual policy against anonymous bylines.
Her claims comes amid the ongoing saga over the so-called “Cornell 7” case, in which a former Cornell student has accused seven fraternity members of sexually assaulting her.
“Since the Cornell story broke, I have had to face the reality that despite all the ways Stanford and law enforcement have failed me — along with countless others — they do not have to face the same reckoning as Cornell,” she wrote.
The alleged survivor said Stanford campus police waited four months after her initial report to contact witnesses and conduct phone interviews.
In late 2023, the Stanford University Department of Public Safety submitted the case to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.
But when she sought an update nearly four months later, the offices gave conflicting accounts of who had the case, she wrote.
The DA’s office said it had returned the matter to campus police for further investigation, while the department denied receiving it.
Only after the survivor claims she and victim advocates followed up did police discover the original submission was incomplete and missing witness reports, according to her account.
In May 2024, a detective told her prosecutors had decided to file charges, which the DA’s office subsequently confirmed by email, she wrote.
Yet the charges were not entered into the system until five months later, despite repeated messages from the survivor and victim advocates.
The office eventually responded with a brief apology: “I apologize for the delay.”
“Years of my life were wasted by preventable errors, prolonged delays and the repeated failures of the institutions responsible for handling my case,” she wrote.
The criminal justice process remains unresolved, she said, even after she left Stanford, earned undergraduate and graduate degrees and moved to another state.
The survivor also questioned why the university did not expel the student, asking: “If finding a student responsible for vaginally, digitally and orally raping their peer didn’t warrant an expulsion, what would?”
Last year, she said she contacted Stanford Provost Jenny Martinez, who connected her with Patrick Dunkley, vice provost for institutional equity, access and community.
Dunkley subsequently told her the university would conduct an attorney-client privileged review of sanctions imposed by its Office of Community Standards and Title IX over the previous five years, looking for patterns that might warrant more consistent outcomes.
She also criticized the university for not disclosing the review’s outcome.
The California Post has reached out to Stanford University, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office and the Stanford University Department of Public Safety for comment.
